


the little ones are climbing up the walls

by cashewdani



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, F/M, Gen, Original Character Death(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Her name was next on the list.  That’s how she became Tess’ godmother.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	the little ones are climbing up the walls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [torigates](https://archiveofourown.org/users/torigates/gifts).



> This was written for the beautiful and lovely torigates who I am so lucky to know and who I love beyond words. And because doth it is her birthday. Tori, I wish this was longer and better and that I somehow had gotten some hockey stuff in here. I hope you can appreciate it any way =)

Her name was next on the list. That’s how she became Tess’ godmother. Because Linda, Johnny’s wife, did it for Joseph, and Frank’s sister-in-law took the title for Theresa and then Tess was on the way, and it was her turn.

She bought a new suit and held the baby and promised to do a lot of things like they meant nothing.

Amy’s not even entirely sure what she promised.

And when Vicky, Tess’ mother went to stay with her mother and then seemingly disappeared, unreachable by phone, still no contact nine weeks later, post-partum apparently hitting her harder than anyone had noticed, Amy had thought about it a little more in focus. She’d promised Marcus that she’d show Tess how to shave her legs, but that Vicky would probably be back long before then.

Vicky’s out there, somewhere in the world, and she doesn’t know that her husband’s dead.

Amy’s brother, Marcus, is dead. As of 4:37 this afternoon. She might have even heard about the accident on the scanner if she’d paid attention to anything besides the big codes. Instead, Nicky had come down to the precinct and said he needed to talk to her, alone, someplace. And she’d thought their dad had had a heart attack or their mother had burned herself on that pan with the loose handle that she insisted on using still since it belonged to her abuela before her, and lots of other things, but none of them were about Marcus. Marcus was only two years older than she is. He’s not allowed to be dead.

Their mother is holding Tess, like she has to protect this baby in the way she couldn’t protect her own, and Amy keeps staring at the scene like it’s a thing she’s been built as a person to endure. It seems right for Tess to stay with Mama. Tess spends her days staying with Mama any way.

But, her mother had said earlier, already so broken, “You are the godmother, Amy. You are the one who will do this.”

\---

The whole squad comes to the funeral. She keeps casting glances back at them from her own seat in the front row between Linda and Al, Tess on her lap.

They had to buy her a funeral dress. Tess can’t even eat solid food yet but she owns a funeral dress. 

Catching Terry’s eyeline, she wishes she was sitting with them instead

Until after, when Charles is crying and he won’t stop and Jake is just looking at her like she’s the last Christmas tree in the lot on December 24th. Then she doesn’t know where she wants to be except not here. 

Rosa’s the one who glares at them, who gets them to avert their eyes and go eat some of the nine Edible Arrangements that came this morning.

“Thanks,” Amy says but Rosa simply shrugs.

“They were weirding me out. Are you really going to raise this baby now?” she gestures at Tess, sitting on Amy’s dad’s lap.

“I’m going to try?” 

Amy didn’t mean for it to come out like a question.

\---

It’s 6:24 and her shift ended at 5:30, but she can’t get up from her desk. Because her sweet, beautiful, orphaned and abandoned niece has slept all day in her grandmother’s house. But that baby is going to go home with her burned out and useless aunt and cry all night.

No matter what Amy does, that baby is going to cry. She doesn’t want to eat, or watch her mobile, or listen to any of the music Amy has on her iPod. She doesn’t care that it’s been almost three weeks and Amy has barely slept.

If she were smart, she would have napped for the past hour in the squad room, but that would have required getting up and honestly it hadn’t occurred to her before now.

“What are you still doing here?” Rosa asks, putting on one of her six basically identical leather jackets.

“Paperwork,” Amy says because it’s a word that makes sense.

“You closed your last open case before lunch,” 

Amy just nods, staring at her black computer screen. Apparently she shut it down at some point.

“Santiago, seriously, are you okay?”

And Amy is pretty sure she’s still nodding, but she can feel the tears welling up in her eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine. Things are fine.” People raise babies all the time. People are so much better than she is at this.

“Are they really fine?” Rosa pushes.

“Yes!” Her voice cracks on it though, and even if that hadn’t happened, people who are fine probably don’t scream loudly about how fine they are. She looks around, wondering if anyone noticed, but there’s two guys wearing tutus fighting one another by Hitchcock’s desk, so she’s probably okay. As long as she breathes, that’s it, deep breaths, this is survivable. It’s nothing.

Rosa says, “Amy,” gently, touching her shoulder a little, and things are not nothing if Rosa is willingly touching her.

“She won’t stop crying,” Amy spills out. “She just...won’t. And last night, last night I was imagining what it would be like to smother her? Like what would be the best thing to smother her with? And then I had to leave her in her crib and just sob in the bathroom because I wasn’t entirely sure I wouldn’t do it.”

“Okay, tonight, we’re going to go pick up the baby and then you’re going to my apartment and I’m going to stay at your place with her.”

Amy shakes her head. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask. I offered.”

“But you don’t let…”

“Don’t make me take it back. And if you tell _anyone_ where I live...”

“I would never,” Amy swears, and she means it.

“Get your coat,” Rosa says, pulling back on Amy’s chair a little, and she goes, because it’s nice to have someone taking care of her.

\---

“Do you even know anything about babies?” Amy hadn’t thought to ask until they were walking the last block to her mother’s from the bus stop.

“Feed them, change them, don’t let them stick their hands in outlets. Seems pretty cut and dry.”

“You really don’t have to. I can ask my mom...” but Amy trails off because she hasn’t asked her mother, and there’s a reason for that. That her mother is with Tess all day and that Amy is supposed to be able to do this. 

She doesn’t like to fail.

“Just ring the bell so we have a chance of getting the 7:19 back to yours.”

Mrs. Santiago remembers Rosa from the funeral and talks about what pretty hair she has and Amy knows she’s exhausted but she almost feels like she’s hallucinating seeing Rosa offering up thanks with a baby on her hip.

\---

There’s been lots of times Amy’s daydreamed about snooping in Rosa’s apartment but as soon as she closes the door behind her, all she’s concerned about is finding the bedroom.

She passes out on top of the chocolate brown comforter, still in her work clothes, and doesn’t wake up until she has to pee at nearly 3 in the morning.

Snooping doesn’t feel like a priority then either.

\---

The next morning at work Rosa comes over to Amy’s desk holding her house keys. “You alright now?”

“I am, thank you.” And she is. She feels human again. She can go home tonight and walk Tess through the ever smaller feeling rooms of her apartment without losing her grip on reality. “Even though I seriously can’t thank you enough. How was she?”

“She cried. We watched some Korean soap opera thing. I ate your hummus.” Rosa shrugs. “If you need me, call me.” And then she just walks away and it’s too fast for Amy to have noticed if she looked tired.

\---

At lunch, Jake brings an extra pastrami sandwich for her from around the corner, and makes it really obvious that he’s not going to walk away unless he can watch her eat at least half of it.

“Come on, I’ll sit, we can go over the Mendoza case,” and he’s already unwrapping his own hulking wax paper lunch on top of her file folders any way.

“I think we really need to look at the bartender’s account again, there’s something there that’s not adding up,” Amy says, trying to wipe off some of the mustard from her rye bread. Jake always asks for too much mustard.

“Yeah, yeah, but, more importantly, are you okay?” He slaps at her hand. “Also, stop that. You’re wasting all the mustard. Lots of mustard seeds died to make that sandwich for you.”

“I’m okay,” she says, tossing three yellowed napkins into her trashcan.

He looks around the room before saying in a low voice, “Rosa told me she stayed at your place the other night.”

Amy pretends she’s really into the carroway seeds in her bread. “She helped me out.”

“I can help too, you know.” She nods and regrets throwing the napkins away because toying with them would have given her something to do with her hands. “And like I’m better with a baby than Rosa, Amy, come on.”

“He is,” Gina says, passing by and taking Jake’s bag of kettle chips. “His grandma used to watch all the kids in the building and Jake was like the only one that wasn’t trying to fight for domination of the group. You sweet, simple boy. You could have been a God.”

“Aw, thanks, Gina.”

“Alright, keep it in your pants, Peralta,” she says, walking back to her desk.

“But seriously, Amy, let me help. And not just with sandwiches.”

She sighs and picks at the crust on her bread. “I’ve got to figure it out on my own. Tess is my responsibility.”

“Yeah, but part of figuring it out on your own is knowing when to ask for help,” Jake says, and maybe he’s right. “Now eat that so we can go through the bartender theory before I come home with you and show you how to take care of a baby.”

\---

Usually as soon as they get into Amy’s apartment, Tess is wailing, if she hadn’t already started on the bus to the joy of everyone else on their route. But today, she’s just staring at Jake’s face as he crosses and uncrosses his eyes at her. Amy can’t really blame her niece. It is rather hypnotizing.

“She’s really cute, Santiago,” he says, letting one of her chubby baby hands bop him in the face.

“That’s all on her mother’s side,” she answers, trying to process how it feels to be inside her house again without a shriek soundtrack, opening all the cabinets to see if there’s anything she can feed Jake and not feel embarrassed about it.

“Where is her mom?”

Amy shrugs, checking the expiration date on a box of Rice a Roni. “We don’t know. I was going to start looking into it for Marcus but, well...” she trails off before chucking the pilaf in her garbage can.

“I can help with that too.”

And Amy doesn’t want another thing on the list, doesn’t even really want this thing on the list. “Here, give her to me,” she says. “I’ll feed her and you can order Seamless. But, not Thai. I don’t know what Boyle was eating at lunch but I cannot be anywhere near Thai for at least a decade.”

As soon as Jake passes Tess into Amy’s arms, she starts whimpering, and Amy tries valiantly to brush it off. She starts loudly narrating everything she does, asking the baby stupid questions, because somehow it feels right, even though it’s the weirdest thing she’s ever done. “So, how many ounces of formula do you think you’d like tonight? The usual? Oh, that sounds great. I love how consistent you are. Here, let me just get one of the bottles out of the dish rack, there we go. I hope the pink one is good. Does the color change how it tastes?”

By this point, Tess is fully red faced and sobbing and Amy can’t really ignore the anxiety and embarrassment twisting around in her stomach. She busies herself, measuring out the powder, bouncing Amy a little against her hip, attempting to forget that Jake is just sitting there at her dining room table, watching everything fall so spectacularly apart.

Except for how apparently he’s not in the other room, he’s right beside her, slipping his arms under the baby’s armpits and attempting to lift her away. “Relax,” he says, and she’s not sure which one of them he’s talking to.

“I am relaxed,” she snaps, shaking the bottle a little too aggressively.

He puts a hand on her back, “Okay, well then just breathe.”

The baby is already a little quieter against his shoulder than she was in Amy’s arms. “I’m obviously breathing, Peralta.”

“Good,” he says, but he doesn’t move his hand from where it’s resting against her spine. She wonders if he’s sliding his thumb up and down that same way against the baby’s thigh. “Because it’s important.”

Amy closes her eyes and lets out a breath from all the way down in her toes, trying to loosen the unsettled weight she feels like she’s always carrying around these days. “She feeds off my energy. I know. I’m not an idiot.” 

“I’ve told you being high strung is only going to make your life difficult.”

Tess hiccups while Amy says, “It’s just really hard to not be terrified at every moment. How do people willingly do this?”

“That I don’t know. Except babies are cute,” and he smiles at Tess like there’s actually something adorable about the sopping wet, scrunched up infant face near his. “I’ll feed her. Take a bath. Watch something dumb on TV, whatever. I’ll get you when the food gets here.”

“What did you order?”

“Italian. I wanted garlic knots.”

Amy looks at the spot of drool Tess has dribbled onto Jake’s tie, how small she looks against his chest, and feels a pang of needing to take care of her. But then Jake is saying, “Bottle for the baby, bottle for the auntie,” gesturing at a merlot that she doesn’t remember even buying, from some point in her life before, and the idea of having a glass of wine in the bathtub for a few minutes is almost enough to make her cry.

She runs the tap and even though it’s probably loud enough to drown out if there was an upset little girl outside, she can’t hear anything over the tub filling up.

\---

She comes out, towel drying her hair, to see Tess lying on Jake’s chest where he’s sprawled out on her sofa. They’re both asleep, and she watches them, the spread of his hand on the baby’s back, the way the baby’s legs twitch against the fabric of his shirt, until the doorbell rings and the scene is broken.

\---

Tess won’t go to sleep again after that, and she starts to go all pinched and whiny if either of them put her down. They just pass her back and forth for hours. Over the manicotti and during commercials of some marathon about a guy who builds crazy tree houses, and while they each take turns brushing their teeth in Amy’s bathroom.

And then there’s the moment where they’re both kind of looking at one another, Amy holding Tess and Jake in his pajamas, and she’s never seen him in pajamas before. Even though she’s seen him in this NYPD t-shirt and grey sweats, those were for training. For exercises. They weren’t pajamas then.

He reaches for the baby. “I’ll take first shift. Go to bed.”

“No, it’s okay. Sometimes she’ll sleep if she’s in the bed with me. For a little while. You should rest.”

“Already banged that twenty minute nap out before, I’m good for hours. Plus, have to see if that B&B is going to get the tree house of its clients’ dreams! Go.”

“I’ll be right in…”

“I know where you’ll be,” he says with a nudge from his foot in its thick boy sock and she spends the walk down the hall wondering if she’s going to be able to go back to doing this alone tomorrow.

\---

She sleeps, soundly, for a few hours any way, until she feels a definitive dip in the mattress from the other side of the bed.

“Hey, hey, sorry,” she can hear Jake whisper in the darkness. “Didn’t want to wake you.”

“Is the baby okay?” Amy strains, but doesn’t hear anything.

“She’s in her playpen out in the living room, I left the monitor on. But before she finally passed out, she puked all over your couch.”

Amy groans, already moving to swing her legs over the side. “Ugggghhhhh.”

“No, no, I cleaned it, it’s fine, but I can’t...I didn’t want to sleep on the floor. But...I can. I’ll just….yeah, it’s fine.” She can see his shadow receding away from the bed.

“You cleaned it?” Amy asks, because there is nothing she’d want to do less than clean baby vomit off upholstery in the middle of the night.

“I have vast amounts of experience cleaning up puke, specifically off of sofas. I’ll go back out there. Sorry for waking you up.”

“Jake, come on, it’s late. Just get in.”

“I still smell like garlic probably. And maybe baby puke.”

“I don’t care.” She reaches over and pulls his wrist until he’s under the blankets and she’s pretty sure he’s not going to get up and leave.

\---

He doesn’t. He’s still there a few hours later when Tess starts crying for breakfast and a change in the next room and for the first morning in weeks, the noise doesn’t feel like a nail in her coffin.

She wants to push his hair back but he’s blearily asking her what time it is before she gets the nerve.

\---

Things fall into a sort of routine after that. Rosa lets Amy escape to her apartment for a few hours after work on Tuesdays and Jake comes over most nights, like that’s a totally normal thing for him to do.

She starts grocery shopping for his tastes, buying the brand of beer he prefers to have in the fridge, DVR’ing the stuff he likes to watch on TV.

It’s easier with more people. More hands. More sleep, probably the biggest thing. Whatever it is, she feels more confident. Doesn’t automatically think that every time Tess cries it’s because Amy is ruining her for life.

The days are getting longer and Amy thinks about taking her to the park once it gets actually nice out. Pushing her stroller around the neighborhood. Buying her a little bathing suit and taking her for her first trip to the beach. And then sometimes she cries like she’s never going to stop because her brother should be getting to imagine these things too. Her sister-in-law should be the one doing them.

It hits her exceptionally hard one night after Tess has rolled over for the first time. She was on her belly on the carpet, surrounded by the every growing menagerie of stuffed animals Jake keeps buying for her, and suddenly, she was on her back, just like that. And she’d looked up at Amy like she had no idea how she’d done it, this brand new thing she’d never done before. Jake had started to whoop and called her such a smart and driven little girl, and Amy had felt her chest growing tight at that moment. But she looked at Jake, in his faded basketball shorts with the remote in the air high above his head in celebration, and it passed.

Until that night in bed when she had tried to make the list of all the things she was going to get to see. All the things she was going to get to be proud of and a part of, and it seemed so incredibly unfair. She forgets for awhile that Jake is right on the other side of the wall, that it’s been a long time since she’s had to worry about anyone hearing her cry, but it all comes flooding back once there’s a knock and the sound of her door creaking open.

“I’m fine, I’m really fine,” she chokes out, sniffling. 

“Yeah, I know.” He comes and sits on the bed and reaches for her hand, an invitation.

Jake has seen her with spit up in her hair. First thing in the morning without makeup, coffee or even a chance to wipe the crust out of her eyes. He’s wiped baby poop off her arm. And so she lets herself be pulled into his chest and cry there. Just like Tess does.

He doesn’t ask her why she’s sad, he just strokes her hair, and eventually they lie down in the dark and fall asleep.

This time, he’s already started on his day when she gets up, note on the bathroom mirror saying he went for a run, and she doesn’t know why it makes her feel unsettled.

\---

“So does Peralta live with you now?” Rosa asks, picking through the pile of _Sports Illustrated_ on the coffee table.

“He’s been helping. Like you.”

“I would not say that giving you a few hours off is the same as being here all the time.”

Amy checks the refrigerator again, unable to remember from just a few minutes ago if they in fact need more butter. “He’s not here all the time.”

“The two of you are coming in together practically every day.”

“He stayed at his place on Wednesday,” Amy points out, because he had. And the apartment had felt kind of quiet and weird and after her late feeding, Amy had just taken Tess to bed with her, but none of that is the stuff that Rosa is talking about.

“Just...be careful. For the both of you.”

Amy tries to scoff, but it kind of just sounds like a weird exhale. “Sure, Rosa. Will do.”

\---

“What did you do on Wednesday night?” Amy asks him as she rocks Tess’ bouncy seat with her foot and he goes over paperwork for a trial the following morning.

“Boyle wanted me to go and meet a friend of Vivian’s.”

Amy chokes a little on the Heineken she’s drinking, but tries not to cough, her eyes watering. She clears her throat, although it does little to counteract the pinched way her voice sounds. “Was she nice?”

“Eh,” he shrugs. “She wasn’t really my type.”

Amy wants to ask him if he missed them, out with some friend of Vivian’s. If she wasn’t his type, if he’d still like time for those women who might be. What’s going to happen to her when he realizes how ridiculous it is for him to be here.

But they’re all questions she doesn’t want the answers to so she just says she’s going to give the baby a bath instead.

\---

Jake insists they take Tess to the zoo one Saturday they both have off where the sun is out and the thermometer has poked above 60 for the first time all year.

She’s really too little for it but Amy takes lots of pictures of her in the stroller and Jake’s arms in front of various exhibits. They let her have a taste of ice cream and Amy can’t stop laughing at how big her eyes get, the vanilla smearing all over her chin. Jake buys her a stupidly overpriced t-shirt that she’s probably going to outgrow within the month.

And on the subway trip home, the baby passed out cold and Amy leaning into Jake to keep her balance, she feels like she can do this, finally. Like they’re going to be okay, her and Tess.

When they come above ground, Jake carrying the stroller himself like it weighs nothing, her phone buzzes in her bag with a voicemail from Rosa.

It’s possible they were finally able to track down Vicky.

\---

“It’s not fair!” Amy rants, angrily replacing things in Tess’ diaper bag. “Like, I finally get a handle on this and then she’s just around again? Where has she been? All this time, where has she been?”

“If we called Rosa back maybe we’d know.”

“I’ll call her back. When I’m ready I’ll call her back.” She sighs, running her fingers over the sweater Tess was wearing earlier. “I can’t believe some part of me is trying to keep her mother away from her. What is wrong with me?”

“Hey, nothing is wrong with you. You’ve been a mother to her. For a lot longer than Vicky.”

“Yeah, but Vicky’s her mother. I’m Aunt Amy. Up until very recently, Useless Aunt Amy.”

“Godmother Amy. Always Heart in the Right Place Godmother Amy.”

She sighs again, has been sighing for ages, but this time, something about the sigh makes Jake kiss her temple, like he’s trying to take some of the stress away with him. And she looks up at him, to the face that so clearly depicts why he’s been here every night, before kissing him on the mouth.

This time, when she sighs, it’s for a completely different reason.

\---

The baby sleeps long enough for her to blow him against the bedroom door and her to come once and almost again, spread out on the bed with his fingers inside her.

And she thinks she loves him because once Tess starts to really wail, no chance of her self soothing back to slumber, he goes and washes his hands and carries her around in the crook of his arm until she’s quiet.

Amy stares at the ceiling, turned on and sad and not knowing where anything is going.

\---

She does call Rosa back. After some wine and all the cookies left in the pantry.

And she writes down the phone number Rosa gives her and stares at it during another glass of chardonnay.

When it’s empty, she dials, and hears Vicky’s voice on the other end of the line.

\---

Jake comes and sits with her on the couch as she goes through it all. About Marcus and Tess and how no one has been able to reach her for months. She doesn’t know how she’s not screaming. How Vicky can even understand her under all the resentment soaking her voice.

Jake rubs his thumb over the back of her hand as she calmly asks what Vicky wants to do.

And he uses that same thumb to wipe at her cheeks when Amy tells him Vicky’s going to be coming back to New York, to see if she can handle it.

\---

The morning that they’re meeting up with her, at some diner by Amy’s parents’, she takes extra time to make sure Tess looks her best.

She’d bought her a new dress that’s the color of lemon cake and got little frilly socks to match that Rosa had hated on sight. And when she’s rolling them on her, she can’t help but think how big she’s getting. 

“You are smart and you are wonderful and I know I’m not supposed to tell you that you’re pretty because girls are allowed to be so much more than pretty, but really, Tess, you are beautiful.” And Tess giggles and smiles and reaches for those ruffled socks on her feet.

Amy wonders if Vicky could even recognize her.

But when Vicky walks through the doors, thirteen minutes late by Amy’s watch, she still reaches out for Tess like she knows she’s her baby. If Amy were a better person, she wouldn’t have taken so much pride in the way that Tess only buries herself closer into her.

\---

“So, she’s just like, what? Trying this out?” Jake asks, clearly mad as he’s slamming through the kitchen.

“She’s her mother, she can do whatever she wants, Jake.”

“You’re her mother,” Jake spits out before realizing what he’s said. “Amy…I’m sor...I didn’t mean...”

“It’s okay,” Amy says, because she’d already cried about it in the cab. “I will always be her aunt, I will always be her godmother and I will always love her. Anything else, well I guess it’s a bonus.”

“It’s not right.”

“I know.”

"People shouldn't just leave their kids," he says with all the hurt he's carried around with him since he was a little boy.

All she can do is repeat, "I know."

“And what if she leaves again?”

“And what if she stays?”

He hugs her then, fiercely, and neither of them answer the other's question.

\---

Tess has a ladybug first birthday complete with a red dress and black leather jacket, courtesy of Rosa, tons of spotted balloons and a cake with almost an inch of icing on it and antennae.

She cries when everyone starts to sing but goes mesmerized by the lit up number one candle sticking up between the insect’s wings when Jake puts it down on the high chair in front of her. Amy’s the one who helps her blow it out and wipe the frosting off her cheeks and hands and out of her hair before she dyes herself bright pink for days from mashing her own little slice into oblivion.

They send Vicky the pictures.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [the little ones are climbing up the walls [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9163645) by [bessyboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessyboo/pseuds/bessyboo)




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